Excerpts from my 8th grade diaries. I had moved to a tough city school from a cushy life in Phoenix. I was extremely unpopular — alternately taunted, bullied, and completely ignored.

Please read Part One first

April 5, 1978
Day rating: Square-minu minus minus (square = worst day)

I lost the spelling bee. No, no, I’m not going to carry on. I didn’t cry or anything. Of course I’m disappointed, but not as much as I expected. I came in 7th out of 28. Not TOO bad. 28th, really, out of 39,000. I am No. 7 out of 39,021 people. When you think of it in those terms, it’s damn good.

I want to die. Who am I kidding? I’m not in the absolute PITS, but I’m very depressed. It was terrifying. We had to walk up to a microphone to spell our words on a stage. I’m really rather not talk about it — because it’s forever embedded permanently in my memories.

Of course everyone treated me like a champ at home. Anne [family friend] bought me some really nice things. A single rose, some little things like glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty, the normal vending machine junk, and a very nice stick pin that has the comedy and tradgedy masks on it. As you can tell, I took the day off from school. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to live at this moment.

April 6, 1978
Day rating: Square

I am very depressed, but it will blow over. I think I will not mention the Bee again in this journal until it has blown over and has been settled for a long, long time — perhaps never.

Gilbert Cooper doesn’t know me and doesn’t like me. It’s amazing how everyone turns you off and forgets you as soon as you’re out of the spotlight.

Postscript, August 8, 2008

I was doing amazingly well at the final Bee — I was older than most of the kids, and lucked out on getting super easy words — blazon, paprika, inaugurate. My father, stepmom, and brothers were in the audience, and I could see their grins: she’s got it.

Then, I got the word corrugate. Which I knew. But I carelessly omitted the G. Corruate. The bell rang. I lost.

I stumbled through the rest of my school year before starting 9th grade in a new town. The new school was torture, but it was different, and not quite as horrifying as that special, special year at Highlands Junior High, White Plains, New York.

The photo above is of the plaque I received (sitting next to it, apropos of nothing, is one of my mom’s many tennis awards.) The plaque lived in my important-document lockbox all these years, and I did not take it out until a few months ago. Now it lives on a shelf in my living room. You’re welcome to come over and have a gawk.